Plutarch - Research Article from Encyclopedia of Religion

Life, Works, and Religious Outlook

Dualism

Scholars are divided over dualism in Plutarch. In The Generation of the Soul in the Timaios, Plutarch posits a "world soul," which existed in a precosmic state as a source of cosmic evil before this soul obtained an intellect (Logos). Elsewhere he suggests that Zoroastrian dualism may be responsible for the doctrine of daimones (415D), and he discourses on the struggle between good and evil forces in Zoroastrianism—for example, as a tentative explanation for the battle between Osiris and Seth in Egyptian myth (Isis and Osiris 369D–370C). But dualism in the strict sense (a world equally balanced between good and evil—that is, between equal spiritual beings, one good, one evil) is rarely in question and certainly inconsistent with his belief in a benevolent and providential God ruling a basically good world.